The madness continues. Can anyone explain why?
Why is this country being desimated? Words can not be found to describe the
anquish of so many caused by so few with such impunity. Victims are arrested
whilst perpertrators continue their criminal actions unabated with the apparent
blessings of the Government and law enforcement agencies. And let us not
forget the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans who are continuously displaced,
murdered, tortured, raped, disposessed of their life's endeavours. All for
wanting to practice their basic human rights. This retribution must stop. Does
anyone out there in the world care? If you do please pass this on to as many
people as possible and lobby your MP, Senator or whoever your Government
representative is in whatever country you may be, to help return the rule of law
to our beautiful country.

Mike Lander

40 BLACK RHINO FACE POACHING ON GOURLAYS RANCH WHICH
IS AN OFFICIAL PART OF THE NATIONAL POLICY ON BLACK RHINO
CONSERVATION.

Ten black Rhino arrived on Gourlays Ranch in 1987, in a
Zimbabwe Government attempt to halt the extinction of the species. The animals
quickly adapted to their new home on 42 000 acres of natural habitat. They bred
at the highest rate of any rhino project on private game farms in the nation.
From 1987 to 2001, only one rhino died - this was of old age. The herd is rated
by some as the best in the country. Zoologists from the Center of Endangered
Species at the San Diego Zoo repeatedly visit the ranch to study the animals and
to donate funds for their protection.

In February 2000 supposed war veterans invaded the Gourlays
Ranch and many other farm properties across the country. They built their huts
where they pleased and the territorial rhino were forced to live in smaller
areas. The reduced habitat casuses fighting between the territoral bulls. A
few days ago one bull rhino died due to the stressed conditions.

Last week the war veterans invaded and barricaded the farm and
demanded the eviction of the family who have owned the land for 15 years. They
threatened to kill the family and all the employees and burn the buildings
unless the owners vacate the property within a week - Over the weekend they
intensified their demands and the family were forced to move off on saturday.
Mr Pascal was arrested and released on Monday.

The tragedy extends far beyond the family and the hundreds of
people who rely on the income generated by the ranch. The black rhino
face death by poaching. The loss of the rhino on one property will
push the world numbers closer to EXTINCTION. The gene pool will be extinguised
and as much as 10% of the black rhino in Zimbabwe will die - Its taken 15
years to get the numbers up and we are finally seeing progress - LETS KEEP IT
THAT WAY.

Pascal wrote "What started all of the nonsense is that we are
a black rhino conservancy. We have approximately 40 black rhino on the
property. Last year we had the vets come down from Harare due to the squatters
snaring the animals. A big bull died last week due to fighting as the animals
are now compressed into a small area and the bulls areas are overlapping. We
did what we were supposed to do according to the law and contacted a government
vet and National Parks. The vet came out to ascertain the cause of death and
National Parks collected the horn. The was on Sunday.. On Monday, all hell
broke loose as the squatters now decided that they own the rhino and they want
the trophy fee for these animals and we should have consulted with them prior to
calling the vet and National Parks."

The War Vets have also stopped the pumping of water for the
animals. They haven't had water since 25 March 2002.

We dare not sit by and let this happen!! Write to every group
and individual you know who have the welfare of the black rhino close to heart.
Contact your government representatives and ask for an interventiion of this
pending disaster. Together we can arouse the conscious of the world to see the
depth of the horror that will happen if the events in Zimbabwe
continue.

There is room for everyone in Zimbabwe, black, white and
WILDLIFE. It simply needs some committed people to take control of the
situation and and re-arrange the structure to everyone's benefit and
satisfaction. Its worth a try before its too late.

Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement
for Democratic Charge (MDC) have started their first face-to-face discussions
since disputed presidential elections last month.

Mugabe says he won fair and
square

The talks are led by mediators from Nigeria and Nigeria.

But correspondents say hopes for progress are dim, as both sides have dug in
their heels on the issue of whether fresh elections are needed.

The MDC insists that the March poll was rigged and has called for a rerun -
an idea categorically rejected by Zanu-PF.

International monitors

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai told supporters that if Zanu-PF was not willing
to talk about an election rerun, "there is no need to even start negotiations."

In his first rally since he lost the election, Mr Tsvangirai also accused
President Robert Mugabe of putting the country under "a military dictatorship".

Tsvangirai wants new
elections

The MDC says fresh elections should be held under
international supervision.

President Mugabe, for his part, has vowed that no new presidential poll will
be held until his current term expires six years from now.

A member of the Zanu-PF delegation to the talks, Information Minister
Jonathan Moyo, said his party was going into dialogue - not negotiations - with
the MDC, and did not expect to discuss the election.

"If they [MDC] have a problem with the election, they know what to do. They
should go to the courts and get serious. Otherwise they should go into oblivion
gracefully," Mr Moyo said.

Banned protests

The planned talks come after a weekend of unrest across Zimbabwe.

The army is determined to thwart
disturbances

Police broke up anti-government demonstrations in Harare
and other parts of the country.

The authorities had banned the demonstrations, organised by an umbrella
organisation called the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA).

Art least 21 people, including NCA leader Lovemore Madhuku, were arrested and
were expected to appear in court on Monday.

The protesters say they plan to stage more protests to force a change to the
constitution, which they say has given Mr Mugabe extensive
powers.

Zimbabwe's Police said here on Sunday that they have arrested
three whitemen in Bubi district in Matebeleland North province for allegedly
openingfire at about 400 settlers who were demonstrating against Gourls farm
ownerRichard Pascal following a misunderstanding.

"One of the
settlers was slightly injured on the back of the head by apellet and was
sent to a local hospital for treatment," said policespokesman Chief
Inspector Tarwireyi Tirivavi.

"The suspects are expected to appear in
court soon facing attempted murdercharges," he said.

Tirivavi said
the settlers were demonstrating against Pascal after theyaccused him of
campaigning for Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) duringlast month's
presidential poll, saying they could not co-exist with him.

"As they were
marching, the three suspects took some short guns and firedinto the crowd,"
he said.

Tirivavi said the white men also opened the cage of ostriches to
attack thedemonstrating settlers resulting in one of them being kicked by an
ostrichon the chest.

The three suspects, he said, were overpowered by
the settlers who laterhanded them to the police.

"They defended their
action, saying they were firing into the air to scareaway the
demonstrators," Tirivavi added.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------Protesters
called for curb of Mugabe's powersHARARE Sixty-four people arrested during
protests against disputedpresidential elections were allowed to see lawyers
yesterday after about 30hours in custody, a lawyer said.

Alec
Machadehama, a lawyer for the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA),the
umbrella organisation of civic groups that organised Saturday'sprotests,
said he met with the group's leader, Lovemore Madhuku, and 29others being
held at the main Harare police station. Madhuku told his lawyerhe was
unharmed.

"They are still being detained. The accusations against them
are beingclarified," Machadehama said.

Police spokesman Tarwireyi
Tirivavi said earlier that those detained wereaccused of violating the
Public Order and Security Act under which theprotests were
forbidden.

Douglas Mwonzura, a spokesman for the NCA, said 34 other
demonstrators werebeing held in the provincial capitals of Bulawayo, Gweru
and Mutare.

Earlier, witnesses said many of those detained were beaten by
baton-wieldingpolice during their arrests.

"They were badly bruised,
some had been bleeding from the ears and theirnecks," said a witness who saw
them in Harare central police station.

The demonstrators demanded the
introduction of a new democratic constitutionthat would restrict President
Robert Mugabe's autocratic powers.

In addition to the NCA members
arrested in Harare, two members of itsnational task force were arrested in
the central town of Gweru.

"We have no indication of when (those
arrested) will be released," Mwonzorasaid.

Muchadehama said: "I have
not yet seen any of them."

Muchadehama said all had been arrested under
the new Public Order andSecurity Act, a draconian legislation that gives
police sweeping powers toban meetings and arrest people at
will.

Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) spokesman Douglas
Mwonzorasaid 15 people were arrested in Bulawayo, 10 in Gweru and nine in
Mutare.Police had originally refused all of them access to their lawyers,
inviolation of their constitutional rights, he said.

Edwina Spicer, a
television journalist, was also arrested and detainedbriefly on Saturday
with her husband, evidently after filming truckloads ofpolice being deployed
in the capital.

Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo, whose ministry controls
the police, warnedon Friday that any demonstrations held would be considered
illegal andstopped. "The law will be applied in full force," he
said.

The MDC has rejected Mugabe's victory over its leader Morgan
Tsvangirai andcalled for a revote in an election they said was tainted by
politicalviolence and vote rigging.

The US condemned the vote, and the
Commonwealth and its former coloniessuspended Zimbabwe for a year, while
most of the world declared Mugabe'svictory illegitimate for the same reasons
cited by the MDC.

Mugabe has rejected the MDC's call for another
election. "The next poll willbe held six years hence. Let that sink in to
Britain and its surrogates inthe MDC," Mugabe told party members on
Friday.

Mugabe has painted the opposition as lackeys of Britain,
Zimbabwe's formercolonial power.

He said there would "never, never,
never" be a rerun of the ballot, and thatthe result of the election was "the
people's mandate that we, Zanu (PF)alone, have the right to rule and no one
else".

This latest spate of arrests is the second time since the
disputedpresidential election held last month that authorities have
squashedattempts by national prodemocracy organisations to protest against
theballot.

A three-day national protest strike called two weeks ago
by the ZimbabweCongress of Trade Unions, the national labour movement,
foundered on thesecond day in the wake of threats of forcible state
action.

The new law also prevented labour officials from moving freely
and holdingmeetings at factories and businesses to promote the
event.

Observers say that the repressive state response in both cases, as
well as acampaign of violent retribution against supporters of the MDC, has
dealt acritical blow to organised opposition to the 78-year-old Mugabe, who
hasruled for the past 22 years. Sapa-AFP

JOHANNESBURG,
8 April (IRIN) - Allegations of food aid being politicised have resurfaced in
Zimbabwe with a report that opposition supporters' children are being driven
away from school supplementary feeding schemes in rural areas.

Shari
Eppel of rights group Amani Trust said that in the course of helping torture
victims, she had been told that children of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
supporters were being denied access to school food queues in Mberengwa East, in
the far south of the country.

In her office on Friday was Sam Mlilo,
district chairman of Mburengwa East, who told IRIN he had seen children driven
out of the queue for the supplementary meal at the Chamakudo Primary School,
near Mataga, because of their parents' political beliefs.

"Children with
parents sympathetic to the MDC are denied access to food. In each village there
are some MDC supporters and the villagers know MDC supporters by name and drive
their children away," Mlilo claimed. He said people had tried in vain to
complain.

He added that ZANU-PF structures were being used to distribute
food and that traditional leaders were also distributing food along party
lines.

Aid groups contacted by IRIN, however, said they were not aware of
children being denied access to the school feeding schemes. Dennis O'Brien,
country director of Care International, said field staff at school feeding
points regularly checked the schemes registers, which was an opportunity for
people to raise concerns. We would immediately raise it with authorities and
work to resolve it," he said.

Bhekimpilo Khanye, World Vision operations
manager for the southern region, said his organisation hadn't started
supplementary feeding yet, but was preparing to do so. "People on the ground
will have to get an understanding of the political nature of food distribution,"
he said, adding that so far there had been "nothing to scare us
off".

Edward Watkiss of Christian Aid said many complaints stemmed from
agencies not being able to "blanket feed" all schools in an area. "If a school
three kilometres away is not fed, there are grumbles of political favours either
towards government or the opposition. We find that when we get down to district
level, people are down to earth, they are not political like at provincial
level," he said.

Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) Director
Munyaradzi Bidi said he had not heard of children being victimised in this way,
but said that during the March elections many schools closed down, denying
children access to the nutritional supplements they would have received
there.

Further afield in Gokwe, Bidi said, ZANU-PF youths were trying to
control oil and maize prices in shops and the prices the items were sold at
could vary according to political affiliation.

Eppel said a report on the
victimisation of the children would be compiled with information from various
regions, and would be presented to the donor agencies.

The latest
allegations come after last week's release by the International Crisis Group
(ICG) of a report saying maize imports were directed to areas of greatest
support for the ruling party, ZANU-PF. At the time Edward Mamutse, a government
spokesman in Zimbabwe's Department of Information and Publicity said: "There's
nothing of the sort."

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's ailing economy received a
boost on Monday with the announcement of an agreement to export beef to Libya,
with whom the country has close links and a fuel supply agreement.

Also
on Monday, post-election talks facilitated by South Africa and Nigeria between
the MDC and ZANU-PF finally started.The MDC, which narrowly lost the
presidential elections, is demanding a fresh poll, calling Mugabe's government a
junta.

At a time when Zimbabwe is facing its worst
foreign currency crisis ever,bankers say the country needs a staggering
US$300 million (Z$16,5 billion)this year alone, to feed a total of 7,8
million starving people countrywide.

This comes amid reports that the
government has decided to introduce a newand ambitious economic programme
focussing on increased agriculturalproduction.

Under the proposed
economic recovery programme, the government says about100 000 hectares of
land would be put under irrigation for maize productionto yield
approximately 400 000 tonnes of maize that is expected to beharvested in
August, this year, to meet the maize deficit caused by
thedrought.

The programme also boasts creating more than one million
jobs. However,bankers said all these statistics were very "optimistic but
highlyunreliable" because the country was facing a very serious
drought.

Besides, they said, Zimbabwe's huge domestic debt of more than
$227 billionand foreign debt of US$700 million made it extremely difficult
for thegovernment to pay for various schemes, including food imports
fromneighbouring countries.

Stanbic Bank of Zimbabwe Limited
(Stanbic), in its Monthly Economic Pointerreleased last week, said there
were radical policy changes needed to arrestthe economic
melt-down.

The bank said as Zimbabwe puts behind the first quarter of the
year,prospects of economic recovery over the remainder of 2002 remained
bleak,aggravated by a plethora of challenges.

Stanbic said: "It is
inescapable that Zimbabwe will, over the next 12months, face an acute cereal
deficit, closure of which requires at leastUS$300 million. This calamity has
come at a time when the country is facingits worst foreign currency
crisis."

The bank said other factors that needed tight monitoring and
solvingincluded the foreign exchange shortages, the burgeoning inflation,
thecountry risk factor, as well as the "curse of past fiscal
slippages".

Joseph Made, the Minister of lands, Agriculture and Rural
Resettlement, inhis ambitious land scheme, said the government had revised
upwards theprogramme and agrarian reform budget from US$1,9 billion (Z$104,5
billion)to US$3 billion (Z$165 billion), with the bulk of the money expected
to gotowards infrastructure and farmer credit support over a five-year
period.

Last week, however, the Minister of Finance and Economic
Development, SimbaMakoni, said the government would only be able to deal
with the food crisisif a supplementary budget was passed by parliament
because the coffers hadrun dry.

The government later said it was
finalising a $95 billion programme formaize imports, food aid, child
supplementary feeding schemes and winter cropinputs to "fight the
drought".

HARARE,
April 8 — Zimbabwe's ruling party began closed-door talks
with its opposition rivals on Monday, but flatly ruled out a re-run of last
month's presidential poll. President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF says the
poll, which gave him a fresh term in office, was fair.

THE business community, which is now accustomed to accusing
the Government for all its failures, has been urged to conserve scarce foreign
exchange resources available by complying with the exchange control
regulations.

Billions of dollars that could have been used to sustain the
local economy have been lost in the past through violation of exchange control
regulations within the business community.

More resources continue to be lost despite a number of
measures put in place by the Government.

Mining, tourism and bureaux de change operators have been
cited as some of the worst culprits.

Violation of exchange control regulations also include
transactions that are being conducted on the parallel market.

In its monthly economic pointer, Stanbic Bank Zimbabwe
Limited reminded business leaders that economic turnaround would not be achieved
by the Government alone.

"Government alone can not steer the economy out of the
current crisis. There is also a role for business to play," Stanbic said.

The commercial bank said compliance with exchange control
regulations would ensure that the little foreign exchange resources available
reduce the long-standing national backlog on foreign payment obligations.

"It should be noted, however, that compliance and virtues
thereof can be enhanced by allowance for some flexibility of the exchange rate
to restore exporter viability," the bank said.

Companies can also mitigate collapse by adopting cost
effective production methods and introducing value-management systems and costs
saving technologies to reduce input costs.

Critical

The private sector can also play a critical role in the
provision of infrastructure and other social programmes. It can also play an
important role in rebuilding the country's international image.

Stanbic said labour organisation could also slowdown the
rate of inflation by making reasonable demands during collective bargaining.

"A key input that labour can play - within the framework of
a social contract - is effective communication of merits of wage restraint,
particularly given the wage-cost-inflation-wage spiral that now characterise the
economy.

"Without this commitment from labour, efforts to stem
inflationary pressures will make a painfully long time to bear fruit," it
said.

On the other hand the civil society should avoid
destabilising the nation.

But in all these efforts, the Government will play a
complementary role of providing a conducive environment in which the business
community operates.

This includes managing the budget deficit, promoting
domestic and foreign investments, speeding up the privatisation process and
arresting the excessive money supply growth which is contributing to high
inflation.

There is now renewed vigour in the management of the economy
following the re-election of President Mugabe.

Stanbic urged the Government to expedite the land
reform.

"A shorter transition phase of the on-going land reform
programme would enhance the credit worthiness of agriculture.

"This would enable the financial system to continue to fully
support this critically important sector."

Pana has reported that Air Zimbabwe has suspended their
flights to the DRC as a result of a debt problem. The airline's Congolese joint
venture partner owes them $4 million. Their failure to pay up has forced Air
Zimbabwe to stop flights to the DRC according to company spokesmen. The airline
has sent representatives to the DRC in efforts to rectify the situation.